


A Struggling Red Light

by cleanlittlesecret



Category: Yu-Gi-Oh! VRAINS
Genre: Alternate Universe - Vampire, Blood Drinking, Childhood Friends, Gen, Insomnia, VRAINS Week 2018
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-03
Updated: 2018-08-03
Packaged: 2019-06-21 08:15:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,795
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15553467
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cleanlittlesecret/pseuds/cleanlittlesecret
Summary: Takeru runs into an old friend while on a walk early one morning, but he and Yuusaku have both changed over the years.(Written for the prompt "another universe.")





	A Struggling Red Light

A gentle kind of busyness ran the streets of Den City at four in the morning. The sky overhead brightened with shades of pink and orange, and pale blue light coated every surface and softened even the most glaring of signs and streetlights. Most of the people walking around were drunks who had stayed out too late the previous night or workers whose jobs started too early in the day, so they paid Takeru little attention as he wandered among them with his hands tucked into his jacket’s pockets—in the left, his old glasses; in the right, a cloth pouch. His throat burned with a rawness that would spread into his head and chest by midday and consume his body by the next night if he didn’t sate it, but he couldn’t bring himself to pick somebody yet, so instead he drifted with the flow of traffic and let his attention flit from one point to another too quickly for his senses to lock onto anyone.

In time, the sidewalk’s trickle led him into the pooling of a scramble crossing, and as he let himself be carried towards another street corner, Takeru caught sight of somebody from the corner of his eye. The first glance revealed nothing special—school uniform, coffee cup, plastic bag—but then Takeru noticed his face as the boy passed, and his mind reached across the years to elementary school. Numb, Takeru followed the boy to his sidewalk path as a name was pulled to his mouth.

“Yuusaku?”

The boy stopped to look back, and Takeru’s belief wavered—the Yuusaku in his memories glowed with a smile; this boy cut with a glare—until those sharp eyes widened. “…Takeru?”

Despite the pain in his throat, Takeru grinned. “Yep, that’s me! We were in the same class for a year in elementary school, remember?”

Yuusaku faced him and nodded, his expression softening. “Yeah, and you moved away after your—” His words stopped short as if he had just realized what he was about to say, and Takeru squeezed the glasses in his pocket.

_After your parents died._

Yuusaku shifted, and the sound of him swallowing boomed in Takeru’s ears. “Sorry.”

Takeru kept his grin as his heartbeat picked up speed. “Don’t worry about it. I’m just happy to see you again.” His senses were already zeroing in, ignoring the rest of the world to magnify every detail of the body before him. Yuusaku’s stomach gurgled and growled, his eyes stayed open too long between blinks, and his school uniform gave off the faint sweat of something that had been worn for a few hours too many. Unlike the other people Takeru had seen that morning, Yuusaku didn’t move with drained exhaustion or fading lethargy but a kind of haunted wakefulness—bright eyes and messy hair, holding his back straight as he swayed on his feet.

“Did you move back to this city?” Yuusaku’s question broke the silence before it could grow too awkward, and Takeru wrenched his gaze away with a quick shake of his head.

“Not exactly. It’s…kind of complicated. What are you doing out here this early?”

“Getting breakfast.” Yuusaku tilted his head to indicate the coffee and bag in his hands. “If you want to talk, then how about we go back to my apartment?”

_No, no, Yuusaku was making it too easy! At this rate he would surely—_ Takeru’s mouth curved into a smile despite himself. “Lead the way.”

It took only a few minutes for them to reach the building where Yuusaku lived, but Takeru could tell from outside the place was run down, nothing like the home he’d visited when they were children. Inside, the hallways and staircases were haunted with the odor of mold, and voices leaked through the walls from morning conversations and forgotten televisions. Thankfully, Yuusaku’s apartment was clean, but that was mostly due to how empty it was—little more than a bed, a desk, and a computer. Takeru flinched when he realized he was standing in Yuusaku’s _bedroom_ , but a quick glance around showed there was nowhere else to go in the apartment.

“The bathroom is down the hall.”

“Thanks, but I’m fine.” Takeru stepped further into the room as he watched Yuusaku close and lock the door. His mind had been distracted enough to let him pay attention to his surroundings as he walked, but now that he stood in a mostly empty room, the world was being reduced to one person again. “Where, uh…where are your parents?”

“Gone.” Yuusaku gave no sign to clarify his meaning, but Takeru couldn’t bring himself to ask. It was enough to say they weren’t here now, weren’t taking care of their son. Yuusaku set his coffee on the desk and opened his bag. “I got two sandwiches. Do you want one?”

“No, thanks. I’m not hungry.” Takeru’s throat burned, and when Yuusaku sat on the bed to eat, the pain spiked into his mouth. He touched his neck with one hand on reflex, but even that slight pressure made the rawness flare. Takeru tried to focus on what Yuusaku was doing as he opened a sandwich, one of those premade kinds that could be bought in convenience stores, but his senses had tunneled to the point that he couldn’t smell the food. _This could end so quickly, the pain would stop if he just—_

“You can sit there.” Yuusaku tilted his head towards the desk, and with a wordless nod, Takeru pulled out the chair and sat. Notebook pages full of numbers and text he couldn’t hope to understand at the moment covered the desk, and an orange light blinking on the monitor showed the computer was still on. Yuusaku must have been doing homework before he went to the store. “So why are you here exactly? Are you not living with your grandparents anymore?”

_Shit._ His buzzing head was in no shape to think, and besides, Takeru had never been good at making up lies on the spot. “Ah, well, I do still live with them, but I’m on my way to meet an old friend of my parents right now, so that’s why I’m here alone.”

“Is the friend here in Den City?”

Takeru reached for his throat again but rubbed the back of his neck instead. “Um…kind of.”

“What?” Yuusaku lowered his sandwich to stare, and Takeru waved his hand.

“I-I mean—”

“Is something wrong?”

“No!” Takeru shook his head so hard it _hurt._ “I’m fine, and my grandparents are fine—everything’s _fine!_ Just please stop asking questions because I can’t…” The words were salt in his throat, and he touched his neck again, the old reflex to feel where his body hurt. The shaking had caused his bangs to fall over his eyes, but he heard plastic rustle as Yuusaku set down his food.

“You’re being weird.”

Takeru would have laughed if he hadn’t been suffering. The bluntness was familiar, a trait that had often gotten Yuusaku in trouble when they were in class together, and when Takeru looked up, Yuusaku was standing in front of him—surely close enough to see the teeth that were a little too sharp and the eyes that were a little too hungry.

“What’s wrong, Takeru?”

Takeru pushed his bangs back and let them fall into place in a weak attempt to distract himself. This close, heat radiated from Yuusaku’s body as if to prove how purely _alive_ he was.

“I need—”

_—to bite to drink to cool his throat to stop hurting to save himself—_

“I-I should—”

_—but his body wouldn’t move it wanted to stay he was going to make another victim—_

“Calm down.” Yuusaku’s hand landed on his shoulder, and Takeru _snapped_ —dragged him close by the shirt only to thrust him back. Yuusaku hit the floor, and Takeru heard in the catching of his breath the realization that he was in danger. It took everything he had to stay in the chair, to curl into himself and bury his face and pray that Yuusaku would _run._

But there was no sound of feet rushing to leave, no door unlocking and opening. All that came was Yuusaku’s voice in a shaky but stubborn, “Takeru.”

“I almost bit you,” Takeru managed as his throat constricted. “If I hadn’t caught myself in time, I would have bitten you, and…You need to get away from me! Just go!”

“I’m not leaving. Why would you bite me?”

“Because I need to drink blood.” His voice cracked just before his body started trembling. This was the first time he’d admitted that to anyone, and while it sounded almost ridiculous when put into words, the reality was too painful for him to joke about it.

“You mean…like a vampire?”

Now _that_ sounded outright ridiculous. Takeru raised his face and opened his eyes to find Yuusaku had gotten to his feet, but this time he gave Takeru a careful amount of distance. Of course, the thought of vampires had crossed his mind, especially when he first noticed how sharp his teeth had gotten, but still… “Vampires aren’t real, and you’re the last person I would have expected to suggest that.”

Yuusaku crossed his arms. “You’re in my room at four in the morning freaking out about needing to drink my blood. Vampirism makes more sense than anything you’ve done in the last five minutes.”

Takeru snorted. He couldn’t believe how casual Yuusaku was being, but he found himself feeling thankful for it. Without the tension of having to hide _everything,_ of playing a role and hoping his act would go unnoticed, he had a much easier time managing himself.

“Now that I know the secret, can you tell me the truth?”

Takeru dipped his head, but after giving the question time to settle, he nodded, and Yuusaku reclaimed his earlier spot on the bed. Sitting there only made him look more vulnerable, but rather than say anything, Takeru pulled his glasses from his pocket to distract himself by opening and closing the frames. He might hold it together if Yuusaku stayed back and didn’t make him anxious.

“I didn’t know you had glasses.”

Takeru’s mouth twisted into a wry smile. “I got them a few years after I moved away, but I don’t need them anymore.”

Yuusaku let out a smooth breath. “When did you start needing to drink blood?”

“About a month ago.” Takeru focused on the green plastic frames in his hands. “The city where my grandparents live has these concrete docks in the port, and I was walking on one when I slipped and fell over the edge. I wasn’t wearing my glasses, so my guess is I slid on a puddle or something without seeing it, and next thing I knew, I woke up underwater.”

“Had you drowned?”

Takeru hid his flinch with a shrug. “I don’t know. I found blood in my hair afterwards, so I may have hit my head on the concrete, but I felt fine when I woke up—better than fine, actually, even though I was in the water.” His shoulders tried to curl with the instinctive desire to hide what he’d been like _before_ , but the clicking of green plastic hitting itself pushed him forward. “For the last few years, I haven’t had the energy to do anything, and I felt bored all the time, but after that fall everything seemed more interesting somehow, and I wanted to get into all of it.”

He’d noticed it the second he’d clawed his way through the surface—a world that was brighter and louder, drawing him into it instead of isolating him within himself, and his first gulps of air had come back up in boundless laughter. Even now, Takeru smiled at the memory.

“When I got home, I was acting so differently that my grandma thought I had a fever, and over the next few hours, I noticed other changes—I could see perfectly without my glasses, and my teeth had gotten sharper—but everything seemed great at first.” His mouth slackened. “I can only go three days without drinking, so after a couple days, I noticed my throat felt like it was burning, and things started getting weird. I kept fixating on my friend Kiku to the point that I couldn’t sense anything around us, and even though I didn’t get was going on, I could tell I was going to end up hurting her if I stayed there any longer, so I left. I ran away.” Another shrug, an attempt to sound casual. “I’ve been living on the road since then.”

No mention of how he’d bitten someone at a bus stop that night, when the world felt small and no one else was around and he hurt too much to pretend he was fine, or how afterwards he realized how _wrong_ his life had become. He dared to peek at Yuusaku from underneath his bangs, but he couldn’t read the thoughts behind that frown, so Takeru forced a little chuckle.

“I needed to get out of that place anyways, so leaving was no big deal. Even though everything seems a lot better like this, I get anxious if I stay in one place for too long now, so it’s better for me to keep moving.” The restlessness buzzed around his ribcage and pushed him to experience new things, to swallow everything life had to offer no matter how unpleasant it could be. Even somewhere as busy and entertaining as Den City wouldn’t satisfy that urge for much longer.

Yuusaku sat up straighter and rubbed his eyes. The room had grown brighter, so maybe time was catching up to him, but when he lowered his hands to look at Takeru, his gaze was still dry and clear. “Have you tried to find anyone who has the same condition as you?”

Takeru closed his glasses with a definite _click_. “How am I supposed to find someone like that? Just go up to people and ask them if they survived an accident, but now they have to drink human blood every few days? I’d probably get the cops called on me.”

“You could Google it.”

Takeru stared at him until Yuusaku sighed.

“People post online about weird stuff that’s happening to them all the time, so if you search for your symptoms, you may find someone who’s going through the same thing on a forum or something. It’s mostly anonymous, so you wouldn’t have to worry too much about someone calling the police. At most, somebody might think you’re a weirdo if you start talking about being a vampire on the internet, but that would still be better than trying to figure everything out by yourself.”

Takeru slowly raised a hand to rub the back of his neck. The thought of searching for another person like himself hadn’t occurred to him, but then again, he had been struggling just to put his life together for the last few weeks. “Well, I’m not much good with computers—besides, am I really a vampire?”

Yuusaku gave him a flat look. “You bite people and drink their blood.”

“Yeah, but isn’t vampirism transferred from one person to another? Like, a vampire bites you, or you drink a vampire’s blood, or something like that, and all I did was fall off a dock. I’ve never met a vampire, and I still breathe and have a heartbeat. Sunlight doesn’t bother me either.”

Yuusaku huffed. “You’re talking about stuff from books and movies. If you don’t know how to use the internet, then I can help you. It’s not that difficult.”

“O-Oh.” Part of Takeru wanted to shrink from the tension in Yuusaku’s voice, but then he realized what was happening—Yuusaku’s personality had changed in the ten years they’d been apart, but he still accepted what Takeru said and offered help like it was natural. Takeru had been living under the weight of what would happen if someone he’d known before learned what he was like now, but if Yuusaku’s reaction was anything to go by, then maybe it didn’t have to be a bad thing. “Thanks, Yuusaku.”

“How long has it been since you last drank?”

That was all it took for his tiny hope to falter and drop to the ground. Of course, this condition wouldn’t disappear because someone believed him and had offered to help—the burning was all the proof he needed of that. “This is the start of the third day.”

“And you can only go three days between drinks.” Yuusaku’s eyes narrowed. “What happens if you go too long without blood?”

His throat hurt too much to swallow. “I don’t know. I’ve been trying to avoid that, and I usually end up attacking someone before it gets too far anyways…”

“Does it have to be human blood?”

“I think so. One time I tried drinking a bird’s blood, but it didn’t help at all.” Takeru fidgeted with his shirt’s collar. “Why are you asking me all these questions?”

“Do you have to take it from a specific place?”

Takeru scowled. “No, I don’t, but you didn’t answer my question.” Yuusaku shrugged off his jacket and unbuttoned the cuff of his sleeve, and Takeru bolted upright in his chair. “I’m not going to drink your blood!”

Yuusaku rolled up his sleeve. “What other option do you have?”

“It shouldn’t get really bad before tonight, so I can go look for another person—”

“That’s what you were doing when you met me earlier, right?” Yuusaku gave him a look. “Is that why you agreed to come here?”

Takeru faltered, looking away to close his eyes. A buzz was creeping into his skull, but he could keep at least some composure as long as he focused. “This is different. You’re—” _A friend?_ Did that word still describe them? He shook his head. “I’m not going to hurt someone I know.”

“So you’ll hurt a stranger instead? How much trouble will that be? I can’t imagine many people offer to let you bite them.”

Past attacks flashed through his head and weighed him down until Takeru felt pinned to his chair. Nobody had offered him blood before, and he was tired of feeling like a monster.

“I’m right here, and I don’t mind.”

Takeru opened his eyes. Yuusaku sat in the same place on his bed with one sleeve rolled to his elbow. Veins were visible under the tender skin on the inside of his wrist. “…Fine.” He stood, shoved his glasses back into hiding, and pulled the pouch from his other pocket.

“What’s that?”

“Just some bandages and stuff for afterwards.” He’d cobbled the kit together after leaving home so he could help his victims—at least, the ones who didn’t understandably try to knock his teeth down his throat. Takeru stared at the floor until Yuusaku moved to the side as if to make room for him on the bed, and when he sat, he dropped the kit onto the blanket. Yuusaku offered his wrist, and with no more delay, Takeru put it to his mouth.

The first moment of biting someone was always the worst—the feeling of skin against his mouth, the force it took to puncture, the flinch that jerked through Yuusaku’s arm. With all its tendon and bone, the wrist wasn’t the easiest place to bite, but the taste of blood seeped in, and Takeru adjusted his mouth to drink. The first swallow brought a liquid coolness that spread throughout his body to soothe his throat and clear his head, and Takeru felt himself relax.

Then the arm went limp and pulled away, dragging his mouth before he let go, and Takeru barely managed to catch him as Yuusaku slid off the bed with his eyes closed.

“Yuusaku?” With one hand holding the bleeding wrist and the other supporting the dead weight, Takeru lifted him onto the bed only for Yuusaku to fall backwards and lie still. “Yuusaku!” His heart jolting, Takeru shook Yuusaku by the shoulders until he feared injuring him, but the limp body didn’t react. Takeru let go and looked around—what should he do? Could he go find someone in the building who would help them? How could he explain away the wound on Yuusaku’s wrist?

But just as he started shaking, Takeru noticed Yuusaku’s condition—his breathing was deep, his heartbeat was regular, and no color had drained from his face. By all appearances, he had just fallen asleep. Takeru let out a trembling breath and dropped back to sit on the bed. “Thank goodness,” he sighed into the quiet bedroom.

Everybody reacted differently to having their blood drank—some stiffened like a corpse, some fought back harder, the most upsetting ones just cried—but he had never seen someone fall asleep from it. Questions crawled inside his chest and made him want to wake Yuusaku to ensure he was okay, but then he remembered how exhausted Yuusaku had been earlier. Seeing him like this, his face soft and relaxed as he lay still on the bed, was infinitely better than facing any of his previous victims, and Takeru could tell himself that he had helped Yuusaku by putting him to sleep.

He got to work patching the bite before blood could get onto the sheets. Two holes pierced a vein in Yuusaku’s wrist, but the surrounding skin showed the impressions of Takeru’s other teeth as well, so he cleaned and disinfected the wound as well as he could with his shaking hands and applied a pad of gauze. As he pressed on the wrist to slow its bleeding, Takeru looked away to think.

Sunlight filled the windows at one side of the room, and the building hummed with the noise of its tenants getting ready for the day. With his mind clear and quiet, Takeru felt the true weight of having another person who knew about his condition settle onto him. Could Yuusaku really help him, or would this put one or both of them in danger? He didn’t know how to feel about the chance of talking with someone who had the same condition as him—if there was a person like that for them to find.

Either way, he couldn’t do anything about it until Yuusaku woke. Takeru taped the gauze in place, relocated his kit and Yuusaku’s abandoned food to the desk, and moved Yuusaku to lie more comfortably on the bed. He picked up the uniform jacket and considered it. “Sorry, Yuusaku. Looks like you’re missing school today.” Yuusaku looked peaceful, his body still except for the smooth rise and fall of his chest, so Takeru spread the jacket over him for a blanket and smiled. “Good night, Yuusaku.”


End file.
